Let us admit, then, that
animals in varying degrees feel pain and fear, and that we
have no general reason to think them less subject to these ills
than we: if they have fewer forebodings, if they do, then by the
same token they are buoyed by fewer hopes. A burning cat is as
agonized as any burning baby. Even where we do have reason to
impute a lesser pain, yet pain is painful. It has been urged, in a
last desperate throw, that animals, who lack any consciousness of
themselves, must find each pang of agony a new thing without past
or future, so that they do not seem to themselves to suffer
any long pain. Even if we grant the premises—which I do not—yet
even pangs of agony are ill to be borne.

To be distressed by
something is to find it an evil. We are so constituted that we are
inclined to make others' distress our own, the more sincerely the
closer these others touch us. Our solidarity in suffering with
other sentient life, so Ruland thought […], was enough to induce
in us a respect for the life and dignity of non-human animals.[1]
He was too sanguine. But at least it is very common now to pay
lip-service to the thesis that it is wrong to cause unnecessary
suffering to an animal. Necessity, of course, is often defined in
terms of human activities that are simply unquestioned, so that
(at most) such a rubric merely rules out technical incompetence.
Such incompetency, being a symptom of inefficiency, might be left
to the technicians' care were it not that a fundamental
inattention to animals as beings to be taken seriously so often
blinds men even to their own profit[…].

The difficulty about this
slogan (that animals be spared unnecessary pains), minimal as it
is, is that it already proves too much for the orthodox to
stomach. I emphasized that it is a minimal principle, that
it makes no mention of rights to life, and indeed allows "rights"
only in the sense that animals are not reckoned mere "stocks and
stones." As a radical moralizer I would go much further […]; but
here for a moment I will take my stand, on the claim that one
should not cause unnecessary suffering to animals. Incompetence is
to be ruled out, and so also are certain ends which are merely
specious, or immoral in themselves. Wanton torture, or torture to
impress a friend, or demonstrate man's superiority (to whom?), or
to satisfy a particular minor whim for some food-stuff whose
production involves enormous suffering, or to save oneself the
trouble of taking due care must all, precisely, be counted wanton.
The human ends within which we calculate necessity must be of some
weight, otherwise the principle is entirely meaningless—for
it licenses even incompetence: "if I am to conduct this
experiment, run this farm with the minimum of care and attention
and without troubling my head or heart about the problematic
distress of the lower creatures, a certain amount of suffering in
my stock will be necessary." "It is of little use to claim
'rights' for animals ... if we show our determination to
subordinate those rights to anything that can be construed into a
human want."[2]
It is of little use claiming that it is wrong to inflict
unnecessary suffering if anything at all will do as a context for
calculating necessity.

Consider then: it is not
necessary to imprison, torture or kill animals if we are to eat.
The laborious transformation of plant proteins into animal
protein, indeed, is notoriously inefficient, and wastes a great
deal of food that would greatly assist human beings in less
carnivorous places. It is not necessary for us to do this: I say
nothing of what may be necessary for the Eskimos, for whom the
orthodox display a sudden, strange affection when confronted by
zoophiles (though the health of Eskimos might be better served by
supplying plant-food). It is not necessary for us, and our
affection for other human beings would perhaps be better shown by
ceasing to steal their plant protein in order to process it into a
form that pleases our palates.

But perhaps flesh-eating,
for some reason that escapes me, is held to be an end of
sufficient weight. Consider then: it is not necessary to submit
animals to their present distress if we are to eat meat. Indeed,
it is not strictly necessary to submit them to any distress: now
that liberal orthodoxy has apparently decreed that any concern
over the integrity of the human corpse is a mere anti-social
superstition (witness the demand for transplantable organs), it
would seem a simple solution both to our flesh-craving and to the
increasing storage problem to cook the victims of automobile
accidents. But even if this economical solution is rejected, and
our flesh-craving must be satisfied with the death of animals, it
is still not necessary to submit them to the foul distresses
involved in factory farming. The only case under which these
distresses are necessary is if we are to go on eating flesh
in our present quantities and without attention to their
well-being—but that is a reason for changing our habits, not for
defending them.

What follows for our
obligations? Simply, that if we are to mean what we say in
outlawing the unnecessary suffering of animals, we must become, at
the least, vegetarians. I repeat that I say nothing here about the
Eskimos, nor have I any interest in the desert-island castaway. We
are not on a desert-island. Nor have I yet seen an orthodox
moralist defend rape or even fornication merely on the ground that
most males trapped in solitary and beyond the law with a naked and
lubricious female would find their principles a little
strained[…].

[I]t is plain that the
present system of intensive farming cannot be defended. We can
replace animal-protein by plant protein, even if we preserve some
free-range beef herds and the like. We can reduce the amount of
flesh we eat to the point where such wholefood farms can cope with
the demand. We can always look for measures that will lessen
distress in our animals rather than measures that will give us the
least possible trouble.

Let us then be
vegetarians, at least. For those who have recognized flesh-eating
for what it is, the merest addiction, and one, as Shelley saw, to
"kindle all putrid humours in [our] frame" ("Queen Mab" 8.215)—for
such moralists the step is easy. It is not necessary, rather it is
incompetent, to kill and torture animals to eat. Those who retain
the end of flesh-eating but admit the iniquity of factory-farming
and the need to reduce the demand for flesh, are in practice in no
better state. Where so many eat so much flesh, there is no
"moderate amount of flesh" that the moralist can decently eat.
Until all have reduced their demands to whatever "reasonable
compromise" between the passion for flesh and the distress of the
animals the moralist has fixed, he must reduce his demand to zero.
Again, he cannot in practice declare that he will eat only
decently reared flesh—for he cannot tell what flesh has been
decently reared, and if by chance he did he would, by buying it,
be putting pressure on the farmer in question to increase his
output by increasingly intensive methods. The open iniquity of
factory farming has this merit, that it makes self-deception about
the horrors caused to animals more difficult. It has this demerit,
that by contrast the old ways seem courteous and kind. So the
existence of concentration camps acclimatises us to slums.

There is a simple
technique for evading responsibility for the things we cause to be
done. In the popular morality of the Sherpas, "To kill a living
creature is sin. ... To kill yak and sheep is sin for the
butchers, but not for those who eat the meat." The hypocrisy of
this is revealed by the fact that though exorcizing spirits is
also a sin, it is not the exorcizing lama, but the man who hires
the lama, who is sinning. There is perhaps a certain sense in the
casuistry: Buddhist monks, like Franciscan friars, thought it
proper to eat what they were given. It was Brother Elias, the
Judas of the Franciscan movement, who attempted a total ban on
flesh-food, and was rebuked for it by God's angel. But however
proper this may be for such, who would (in principle at least)
surrender their own flesh to those in need, it hardly excuses the
average irresponsibility of those who require other men to
inflict suffering upon animals when, as they know, it is
unnecessary[…].

Honourable men may
honourably disagree about some details of human treatment of the
non-human, but vegetarianism is now as necessary a pledge of moral
devotion as was the refusal of emperor-worship in the early
Church. Those who have not made that pledge have no authority to
speak against the most inanely conceived experiments, nor against
hunting, nor against fur-trapping, nor bear-baiting, nor bull
fights, nor pulling the wings off flies. Flesh-eating in our
present circumstances is as empty a gluttony as any of these
things. Those who still eat flesh when they could do otherwise
have no claim to be serious moralists.